LowFree/LowMem problem

From: Matthias Wolle
Date: Mon Jan 21 2008 - 00:33:06 EST


Hi,

my company is running several servers with kernel 2.6.23.12. This are Dual
Quad Core servers (CPU Intel) with 16GB RAM using a 32Bit kernel.
After some days nicely running the oom killer killed our processes.
Our research discovered that the free low memory was reduced to about 11MB. We
found out that the decreasing of low memory is related to the count off
executed and ended programs.

I could reproduce the same bug on a maschine with 2GB RAM without PAE (option
4GB HIGHMEM). The following code reproduces the bug.

#!/bin/sh

while [ true ]; do
cat /proc/meminfo| grep LowFree
done

Please run this script only on a test system. It reduces the low memory quite
fast (within minutes).

The latest available kernel 2.6.24-rc8 is also affected.

Please fell free to request more information from me.
Please always CC to me, I'm not subscribed.

Thanks for reading

Matthias
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